Build an eye-tracking system on a £30 budget

This article was taken from the February 2012 issue of Wired
magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before
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"The brain's components are basically cheap crap," says
37-year-old Aldo Faisal, a
lecturer in neurotechnology at Imperial College, London. "It runs
on electricity but, instead of copper wires, it uses salt water.
And yet it manages to do amazing things."

Cheap components are Faisal's stock-in-trade, and he has
dedicated himself to solving complex problems at minimal cost. His
latest project, developed alongside undergraduates in his
department, is an ultra-low-cost eye-tracking system. "Most
eye-tracking systems cost around £30,000," he says. "Ours works
just as well for a thousandth of that."

The team attached two £10 cameras, usually found in video-game consoles, to a pair of
spectacles. As the user moves his or her eyes, the cameras register
each iris's movement and sends the data to a PC. Right now the
students are playing Pong with their eyes, but in the
pipeline is technology that could control a wheelchair. "The two cameras capture the depth as well as the
direction of where someone is looking," says Faisal. "You could use
your eyes to trace a path, and then the wheelchair would move
accordingly."

Faisal has had approaches from VCs, but he wants a maverick
investor. "We are looking for a commercial partner who embraces the
idea of making everything cheap, so everyone can use it," he says.
"I am not doing research to make money."

Edited by Dan Smith

Comments

I think this will open up UI / user experience testing for students, charities and other organisations.

Colin Wren

Jan 10th 2012

I think this is terrific. We took on the same challenge here in the US in 2010, faced with the same high costs noted. We couldn't get ours to 30 pounds, which is amazing! But our research product, www.grinbath.com, also has sophisticated software for capture, remote visualization and analysis. We got it to a little more than $1k US for the entire system, hardware and software, for mass production. But our assistive mouse replacement, hardware and software, is going to be around US $300. It comes out this month. One, what Faisal has done is amazing and I'm glad to hear others like us are challenging pre-conceived ideas about what technology should cost to work. Two, journalists need to do more research. Baker's work here is great because he did digging to find a low cost provider out there. Most just push out the same press releases from the same costly technology companies as though it was news and not a regurgitation of a press release.

Dr. Brian Still

Jan 10th 2012

I think this is terrific. We took on the same challenge here in the US in 2010, faced with the same high costs noted. We couldn't get ours to 30 pounds, which is amazing! But our research product, www.grinbath.com, also has sophisticated software for capture, remote visualization and analysis. We got it to a little more than $1k US for the entire system, hardware and software, for mass production. But our assistive mouse replacement, hardware and software, is going to be around US $300. It comes out this month. Kudos to Faisal, but there are many other companies, including ours, some already with products in production, that are making available low cost, effective solutions for researchers, people with assistive needs, gamers, etc.